


Not All Jaegers Are Created Equal

by Jwash



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Jaegers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:05:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jwash/pseuds/Jwash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaegers are single-handedly the most powerful military machine ever created, but they are also the most expensive. Each part must be tooled to the highest specifications, the pilots must be rigorously trained, and the facilities to maintain them must be kept in tip-top shape.</p><p>So... just hypothetically... what happens when they aren't? What happens when machine meets malfunction?</p><p>What happens, in short, at Vladivostok shatterdome?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not All Jaegers Are Created Equal

Jaeger: Gogol Delta  
Launch Date: 3rd March 2018  
Classification: Mark 3  
Height: 290ft  
Weight: 2, 110 tons  
Country of Origin: Russia  
Equipment: Hand of God (10 foot explosively-launched tungsten spike in palm of right hand)  
First action: 16th April 2018  
Final action: 16th April 2018

 

“Gogol, come in! Gogol Delta, do you copy?”  
There was a short blast of static and incoherent screaming on the other end of the line. It was not looking good. Colonel Kirill Panov rubbed his eyes and tried again.  
“Gogol Delta! What is your status?”  
“T-this is Gogol Delta!” the voice at the end of the line was quavering. The Colonel's lip curled. It was the left-hand pilot Ivan Takashvili, some Georgian farmboy dredged up by the top brass in Moscow.  
“Jesus, this hurts, Ivan,” came another, weaker voice, belonging to Ivan's cousin, a pasty-faced squib named Danek.  
“Hang in there, okay?”  
“Gogol Delta!” the Colonel shouted into the mike.  
“Y-yeah, this is Gogol Delta. We're down. The right arm's gone, the right-side pneumatics aren't responding.”  
“Help, Ivan...”  
“What happened?” the colonel, hands on his hips, striding about the control room, as if tearing a strip off some wayward corporal. He hadn't been made Commander of the Vladivostok shatterdome to go to pieces at a time like this.  
“I-I don't know,” Takashvili said, in his grating accent. “We tried to fire the spike, but it must've jammed or something. The whole arm's blown out...”  
“What about the kaiju?” Panov cut in. “Where is it?”  
“It's gone. Listen, sir-”  
“Gone where?”  
“I don't know, it just left. Can we get some king of evac-”  
The Colonel yanked off his headset and threw it at the control console. The room was filled with the awful silence that surrounds the genuinely angry. Damage reports scrolled on the screens, and the main display showed the kaiju circling the stricken jaeger, but all eyes were on the Colonel.  
He hissed between his teeth. “Do we have anyone on standby?”  
Andriy, the man at the radar, raised a tentative hand. “The Kaidanovskys, sir.”  
“Hmph, they would be, wouldn't they. I want them out there now. Do we have a heading on the kaiju?”  
“She's heading south, away from Hokkaido,” Andriy said. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “It'll be within Tokyo's patrol area in a few minutes. We should let them handle it and focus on getting Gogol back.”  
“Let them handle it?” the Colonel yelled, his eyes bulging, his face purple. “This is our tenth kill, and you want to give it up to those rice-munchers? You get Cherno Alpha out there in the next five minutes or I swear-”  
“Yes sir,” Andriy said, hurriedly pressing the general alarm. The Colonel would swear, at length. It wouldn't do to give him reason to keep doing it.  
* * *  
The alarm blared in the Kaidanovskys room like a castrated elephant. It filled every inch of space with sound, from the small Orthodox shrine in the corner, to the plain chest of drawers full of identical tank tops, to the metal-framed double bed sparsely covered by a blanket. The figures under the blanket refused to move, though.  
The alarm came again, howling. This time, a large blonde head raised itself out of the bedsheets, indistinguishable in the gloom. It lifted further, and the sheet fell away. The body at least was easier to recognise. Sasha Kaidanovsky slowly disentangled herself and slid on to the floor, getting dressed in a hurry. She ambled over to the bleating intercom and clutched the answer button.  
“'S is S'sha Kaidanovsky,” she said, her gruff voice slurred with sleep. She was not, in her current state, quite ready for the response.  
“This is Vladivostok control! We need you out there now! Get down to bay four, get into Cherno now!” the voice was high pitched and panicky, gabbling it's words.  
“What time is it?”  
“What? Does it matter?”  
“What time is it?” she repeated.  
“Four in the morning! But-”  
“When is breakfast?”  
“Look, we-”  
“When. Is.-”  
“Eight o'clock, you know that! Now, get down to-”  
Sasha shut off the intercom and walked over to the shrine. She knelt for a few seconds, her hands together, before she stood with a sense of purpose. Gently, she nudged the shape in bed.  
“Aleksi. Wake up. The world is trying to end.”  
There was a groan, like ice sheets grinding over one another. Slowly, Aleksis Kaidanovsky rose, as inevitably as majestically as a sunrise. He was improbably tall and muscular and very, very blonde. To anyone else, it would be a marvel. Sasha simply raised her eyebrows.  
“Come on.”  
He grunted, his lips curled in distaste.  
“We have four hours,” Sasha continued. “If we do not finish by then, there will be nothing but cereal and yoghurt for breakfast.”  
Aleksis let out another mournful groan. He dressed himself half-heartedly and stood by the door, scowling, like a child who really doesn't want to go on a walk. Sasha rolled her eyes, walked over, and gave him a kiss on the chin.  
“Someone has to do this.”  
Alexsis grunted affirmatively. They squeezed hands briefly, and exited the room together  
* * *  
Sasha and Aleksis' bare feet slapped on the concrete floors of the Vladivostok shatterdome as they ran to Cherno's bay, their breath frosting in the freezing corridors. There was no time to waste. A kaiju was out there, and that meant they had a job to do. They ran down the stairs, past two rows of armed guards, into the maintenance level, roughly at eye-level for a jaeger, that led to the extending tunnel which in turn led straight into Cherno's conn pod.  
Technicians were ready with the armour, and they suited the two pilots up immediately. The clasps and metal plates froze Sasha's skin, and her right shoulder stung from the tiny needles in the inside the pauldron that dug into her skin for biological readings. Up in the command room, they'd be getting a readout of her body temperature, blood pressure, all they needed to know. Beside her, Aleksis was having trouble as usual with the leg plates. They'd never properly fit, but there never seemed to be the time to get them re-fitted.  
The reactors were whining on full power before the techies were done even plugging the Kaidanovskys in. Together, the two pilots stepped into the boot-saunters, the fastenings slotting into place. The engines reached a fever pitch, and the technicians wisely stepped out, slamming the bulkhead doors behind them. For a few seconds, Sasha had a sense of terrible loneliness, of being trapped in this great iron coffin. Cherno was getting old; her joints creaked, her reactors stuttered on occasion, and Sasha was pretty sure she'd seen a touch of water damp in the corner. Sooner or later, their luck had to run out. Then Aleksis looked across at her, a smile on his face, and her worries lifted.  
“Cherno Alpha?” barked the Colonel, as though the microphone had done him a personal dishonour.  
“Receiving you,” Sasha replied, her voice flat.  
The floor fell away, folding into the walls, and Sasha felt the momentary lightness until the saunters stabilised. Her visor clicked into place, blinding her in one eye. Ahead of her, the readouts flickered into place.  
“Alright, get ready for the drift.”  
There was no countdown, just a jolt of lightning down her spine and she remembered Aleksis' childhood in the Donbas, in some mining town on the frontier, as she felt him remember her childhood in Perm. Then his moving for work, her moving for pastures new, their meeting, their wedding...  
And she was back, herself, but also strangely not. Her vision was binocular again, a good view of the inside of the shatterdome. The big hangar doors at one end were already open, and the lights of helicopters flashed outside. She felt Aleksis anticipate to move their arms, and together they brought Cherno's fists together, slamming them against one another. The noise must have been tremendous in the great concrete hall, but it barely registered in the insulated conn pod. She felt the power of it though. The feedback was instant and powerful.  
“Cherno Alpha ready,” she said into the headset, and the concrete floor under them shifted, bringing them to the hangar doors. Slowly, although still faster than usual, they slid into the Sea of Japan.  
Headlights cut through the dark, illuminating the rough, icy water. Cherno started walking, stepping in perfect time. The saunters ground and heaved, and in response, Cherno heaved herself forwards in a businesslike swagger.  
“Target is just outside 10 mile limit, near the last location of Gogol Delta,” it was a clipped, military voice, unlike the angry drawl of the Colonel. “You are to intercept it before it reaches Tokyo's area of operations.”  
“Which gives us how long?”  
“An hour or so,” said the voice. It didn't sound familiar, but then again, staff at Vladivostok had a high turnover. The weather, people said. “If possible, retrieve pilots of Gogol Delta, but this objective is secondary.”  
“Understood.”  
Sasha glanced over at Aleksis, who looked as though he hadn't heard the broadcast.  
“They say the safety of those pilots is secondary,” Sasha said, over the clanking and grinding of the saunters.  
Aleksis didn't take his eyes off the sea churning ahead of them.  
“We will have to be quick, then,” he growled.  
* * *  
The kaiju had been named Buggane, but he didn't know that. All he was aware of, from the top of his long, toothy snout to the tip of his sinuous tail of tendrils, was a dull ache in his head and a tremendous urge to head inland. Right now though, his curiosity was fixed on the thing in front of him. The thing was shiny, tall and bipedal, and had tried to attack him, hitting him right in the head before holding out one of it's appendages and exploding. Buggane was not well-versed in whatever this thing was, but it mostly seemed to want to attack, so when it had up and died of it's own accord, Buggane couldn't help but be a little confused.  
He had made a few circuits, just in case it tried anything smart, and when it failed to do so, he had slipped closer. The thing made no attempt to stop him, so he came closer still. He hunkered low in the water, his six eyes watching it intently, ready to pounce, when something distracted him. Something growled in the water nearby. Buggane flicked his head up, rearing out of the water, and caught a glimpse of another large bipedal thing ambling towards him. Fairly basic instincts in the depths of Buggane's two brains told it that an appropriate response would be violence.  
Sleek as a shark (which would describe only half of Buggane's appearance; the other half would be made up of a horse and a lot of vague gestures), he slipped closer. The thing saw him, and banged its fists together in a tiny attempt at bravado. The new figure was blockier, shorter, and heftier, but Buggane was feeling confident about these things now, and made to attack first. He shot out of the water at it head-on, only to be met with a large, Tula-approved Tesla fist to the jaw. The strike stunned him, but did not discourage him. He jinked to one side and shot past the newcomer, trying to lash it with his tails. He gave it a good slap across the torso and made to slip on only to stop suddenly with a new pain. The thing had a fistful of his tendrils, and pulled.  
Buggane screeched in rage as the thing sought to drag him in. He lashed out with a back leg at the thing, but only glanced it's torso. Still, he dug his claws in, and gained purchase. He latched his other back foot on to the thing's back and kicked. The thing shook and wobbled, but failed to fall over. Buggane gave a cry of irritation and kicked again. This time, he achieved even less as the thing let go of his flailing tail and drove an elbow right into his back. Screeching in pain, he wrapped his long body around it, his body across it's tall, conical head. He heaved, trying to unbalance it, only for two hot blasts to wash across his chest, searing his skin. Two turbines either side of the thing's head were streaming jets of fire straight into him. Buggane writhed and kicked off the thing, launching into the air before dropping into the blessedly cool water. He circled around the thing warily now. It was no fool, clearly, and animal cunning was called for. The thing tried to turn, but Buggane was too quick. He slipped around it's back and leapt, digging his foreclaws into it and clamping his jaws on to it's head. His teeth scraped across the metal, and he felt sure that he had it now.  
What he did not expect was for the thing to grab his head and heave him off bodily. He did expect it, but this is what it did now, huge steel fists gripping his upper jaw. The pneumatics in it's arms strained and the servos whined, but it finally hauled Buggane off, teeth the size of truck trailers coming loose, leaving long rents in the thing's head. It dragged Buggane in a long arc over itself before piledriving him into the sea. This slowed him only a little, and it continued down, slamming him into the seabed. Lights flashed in Buggane's eyes, or at least the four that still worked. Enraged, he writhed in it's grip, only to get a knee in the chin for his trouble. He thrashed as the thing rained blows on his head, the force of it cracking his skull. He went limp, and the beatings stopped.  
There was a lull in the punching. Buggane, through a red mist, saw his chance. He gripped one of the thing's hands in his claws and heaved as hard as he could, trying to pull it straight of the socket. He dugs his teeth in and heaved, jerking the thing forward and down into the water. It's feet went from under it, and it toppled forward. As it's chest came down on him, the turbines flared again, and it's other fist raised, aimed straight at his neck.  
The last thing Buggane saw, before Cherno Alpha fell on him was the bright light, and two jets of superheated steam bubbling towards his face. The water muffled the crunch. Slowly, Cherno Alpha picked itself up off the burned, crumped body of Buggane and stood. In the east, the sun was just cresting the horizon.  
* * *  
Cherno turned towards the crippled remains of Gogol Delta. Sasha knew what a state the pilots would be in, what two hours of neural handshake to a broken jaeger would do. The helicopters would take too long to get here. Purposefully, Cherno strode towards Gogol. She knelt down and, very carefully, put an arm around Gogol's torso and lifted the stricken Jaeger up, carrying it like a wounded comrade.  
Over the radio, Ivan Taskashvili was babbling his thanks and congratulations, and in the conn pod, Sasha and Aleksis allowed themselves a small smile.  
“Vladivostok control, this is Cherno Alpha,” Sasha said into the mike. “The kaiju is dead, and Gogol Delta has been retrieved. Mission objectives completed. We are bringing us both in.”  
She caught the burst of cheering and applause, switching the mike off. Ahead of her, the coastline of Vladivostok was caught in the most amazing sunrise. Cherno Alpha, with Gogol Delta in their arms, strolled home.  
* * *  
“...Pneumatics were shot to hell before we even got in!” Ivan said, waving a hunk of bread and jam to emphasise his point, “and the spike wasn't loaded properly either! The thing was a walking death trap!”  
Sasha nodded politely. By the time Ivan had been declared well enough by the medical teams to have some breakfast, the techies had done a preliminary examination of Gogol Delta's wounds. The news was, predictably, very bad.  
“I can't believe they let us pilot a jaeger like that,” Danek joined in, shaking his head, “hell, I can't believe they built one like that!”  
Sasha shrugged and sipped her tea, trying to listen, but honestly, these rubes were getting on her nerves. What did they know about jaegers?  
“We ought to ask for a transfer or something,” Ivan went on, his mouth full. “I bet they wouldn't have this kind of thing in Sydney, or California.”  
“Not to mention better beaches, huh?” Danek said, grinning.  
Aleksis was looking down at them, Sasha noted, the same way he looked up people before he pummelled them into the ground. They might be grating, but they couldn't be that bad, surely?  
“We oughta go on TV about this,” Ivan said, suddenly indignant. “Tell everyone back home about this bullshit!”  
“Yeah! We'll knock those arseholes in R&D down a peg, show 'em where they can shove their-”  
“This is our lot,” said Aleksis, abruptly, his voice rumbling. Both the Georgian pilots looked at him in surprise, as did several bystanders. Aleksis wasn't one to waste words, and the interruption just confused things more.  
“We are on the frontline. This means we must risk our lives to save others, regardless of how we may suffer. A true soldier does not complain when his rifle jams. He merely asks for another rifle.”  
It was not especially profound, but the fact that Aleksis said it gave it weight. Even Sasha found herself nodding along. The silence that followed only encouraged him.  
“We have been given the duty to defend the Pacific with whatever we can. I intend to do so until my last breath, with whatever weapon I can. If that weapon is a jaeger, so be it. If it is a knife, then so be it.”  
Ivan and Danek exchanged glances. Together, they stood and departed the table, mumbling apologies and thanks for earlier before bumbling off, occasionally glancing back at Aleksis, who was still sat with a beatific expression on his face.  
“There was no need for that,” Sasha said, chiding. Aleksis looked down at his hands, adjusting his rings idly.  
“They are right, I suppose,” she went on. “These new jaegers are no good. What was the one last year?”  
“Koroviev Zulu.”  
“No, the other one. The one with the alloys that made it go all bow-legged when they dropped it into the sea?”  
“Kazan Lima?”  
“Yeah,” Sasha sighed and cast an eye over the mess hall, and the jaeger hanger beyond it. “At this rate, we won't last another year.”  
“Yes we will,” Aleksis said. He nodded to Cherno Alpha, which was even now being patched up.  
She was big, clunky, and couldn't turn worth a damn, but she was theirs. Sasha smiled to herself.  
“You're right. It will.”


End file.
